Windows Phone hits 25,000 apps; Nokia takes the credit

The Windows Phone Marketplace continues to grow at a steady pace, and has just reached the not insignificant milestone of 25,000 available apps.

And while we're still months away from seeing Nokia's first handset on the platform, the Finnish firm nonetheless believes it has had a hand in sustaining that momentum.

Windows Phone 7 is still less than a year old, but with the Mango update soon to give the platform a power-up in terms of features, and the app count hitting a respectable level, it's not looking a million miles away from being that “third ecosystem” Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer and his Nokia counterpart Stephen Elop have been talking so much about since agreeing to work together back in February.

Of course we've yet to see any tangible results of that partnership, but Nokia thinks even the prospect of a Nokia Windows Phone has had an effect on attracting developers to the platform.

Speaking to TechRadar, Nokia senior VP of developer and marketplace Marco Argenti said: “After we announced our partnership with Microsoft, the amount of apps coming in to the marketplace has actually gone up quite a bit, has almost tripled.

“So we've seen this inflection point very clearly that even without launching a device because they [developers] see greater opportunities come.”

yes, true - wp7 apps are 'pretty'. But if pretty isn't clever, pretty is just dumb, as my granny said.
Compare Seesmic for wp7 with Seesmic for Android or BB OS, or Gravity for Symbian. Compare the gorgeous WP7 email client and the ugly but miles superior winmo 6.5 email client. They are not good.
Symbian's QT apps are 'pretty', too, but Gravity aside they often come with problems because integration isn't nowhere near perfect.
webOS apps, too are gorgeous. I mean iOS gorgeous in the best cases. WebOS, like WP7 still struggles with issues...stuff one should be able to 'take for granted' in 2011 is just not there.
I'm sure eventually wp7 and webOS will reach their full potential (the HTC HD2 showed what winmo was capable of), but by pretending all is peachy and 'pretty', that ain't gonna happen.
I'm no Android fan. In fact, I killed all my Google accounts, mainly because of Android, but in fairness, the often garish appearances aside, many Android apps do work well, get nicely integrated into the OS etc.
Same goes for iOS. iOS is more similar to wp7 than Android is - locked-down, no/limited multi-tasking, reliance on Zune/iTunes, etc etc... But iPhone apps deliver a lot more than any wp7 app I tried. Am I surprised that Opera cannot be bothered to develop a browser for wp7? No! We'll need to wait for Mango and its implementation to pass a fair judgement (Android wasn't that great in its first year, was it), but we sure as sh*t need to kick companies for what is wrong,
There. Rant over.
yes, true - wp7 apps are 'pretty'. But if pretty isn't clever, pretty is just dumb, as my granny said.
Compare Seesmic for wp7 with Seesmic for Android or BB OS, or Gravity for Symbian. Compare the gorgeous WP7 email client and the ugly but miles superior winmo 6.5 email client. They are not good.
Symbian's QT apps are 'pretty', too, but Gravity aside they often come with problems because integration isn't nowhere near perfect.
webOS apps, too are gorgeous. I mean iOS gorgeous in the best cases. WebOS, like WP7 still struggles with issues...stuff one should be able to 'take for granted' in 2011 is just not there.
I'm sure eventually wp7 and webOS will reach their full potential (the HTC HD2 showed what winmo was capable of), but by pretending all is peachy and 'pretty', that ain't gonna happen.
I'm no Android fan. In fact, I killed all my Google accounts, mainly because of Android, but in fairness, the often garish appearances aside, many Android apps do work well, get nicely integrated into the OS etc.
Same goes for iOS. iOS is more similar to wp7 than Android is - locked-down, no/limited multi-tasking, reliance on Zune/iTunes, etc etc... But iPhone apps deliver a lot more than any wp7 app I tried. Am I surprised that Opera cannot be bothered to develop a browser for wp7? No! We'll need to wait for Mango and its implementation to pass a fair judgement (Android wasn't that great in its first year, was it), but we sure as sh*t need to kick companies for what is wrong,
There. Rant over.